Tom “durrr” Dwan’s Million Dollar Poker Challenge is comprised of 50,000 poker hands at tables with stakes of $200/$400 or more. After the last hand, whoever has the biggest bankroll will either win $1.5 million from Dwan, or Dwan will win $500,000 of his opponent’s money.
It wasn’t long after Dwan’s challenge that Phil Ivey took Dwan up and agreed to compete… and then David Benyamine and Patrik Antonius followed. These are three of the biggest names in online and live poker. Phil Ivey is a five-time WSOP bracelet winner, Benyamine has one bracelet, and although Antonius has more than $750K in WSOP winnings, he doesn’t wear a bracelet. Dwan has no WSOP bracelets either, but these guys are just about all in the same league, expect for Ivey, who blows them all away.
Online opinion polls show that Dwan has no chance against Ivey. Although there are some who believe this whole thing is hype and the challenge will never actually take place or that Dwan will never follow through and end up paying out of his pocket when he doesn’t complete the challenge. But Dwan is a pretty cool guy who would not likely make such a joke out of himself.
There are questions though, surrounding the challenge. Like when and where it will take place. It is most likely that FullTilt Poker will win the free advertisement off this one.
Tom Dwan, known affectionately by his poker fans as “durrrr,” has issued an online poker challenge to anyone who has the guts and the bankroll to take it. It is a “heads-up challenge to the world,” according to Dwan. A Bluff Magazine article introduced the challenge, and then Dwan later expounded in a post on the 2 + 2 forum.
Anurag Dikshit, the man behind PartyGaming and it’s existing software platform, is paying a hefty price this week in order to avoid prison time for violating the 1961 Wire Act.
How hefty you might ask yourself?
Try $300,000,000 healthy - and no, the added zeros in that figure are not typos.
Dikshit, who is actually worth a little over a billion dollars, will be paying forward three separate payments of $100 million to the U.S. Department of Justice over the next several years. Unfortunately for him, he is the ONLY person at PartyGaming that will be penalized, even though other shareholders could be considered just as responsible for what had transpired.
He will stay remain the largest shareholder of the very company he started, with a 27% majority; however, his company’s stock will most likely dwindle for the next few months with news of the verdict. The publicly-traded U.K. gaming company is one of the biggest in the industry - and before the 2006 UIGEA, was the largest poker room in the world.
The 2008 World Poker Tour Five-Diamond Championship Main Event television final table is finally set after 5 grueling days of play. Nearly 500 players poined up the $15,000 buyin for this tournament, and the winner ill play for $1.5 million+
Our partner site over at Poker Strategy Forums will be holding FOUR special tournaments all this weekend at none other than the biggest and most popular site in the world - POKERSTARS! These private tournaments will not just be a fun time for new and existing players to get together and play some cards, but each of them will have $100 added to EACH of the prizepools.
